Think about the following questions from the point of view of violation of public policy or breach of a covenant of good faith and fair dealing and see what the outcome would be.
a. A female child care worker alleges that she was unlawfully terminated from her Position as the director of a child care facility after continually refusing to make staff cuts. The staff cuts she was asked to make resulted in violation of state regulations governing the minimum ratios between staff and child. After the employee was terminated, the employer’s child care center was in violation of the staff-to-child ratio.
b. A machine operator employee with a major depressive disorder intermittently takes leaves under the Family and Medical Leave Act, resulting in alleged harassment by her employer surrounding her FMLA usage as well as a transfer to various difficult machines after her return from leave. Two months after her last FMLA leave, she is terminated for “improper phone usage.”
c. A teacher under contract is terminated after insisting that his superiors report a situation where a student was being physically abused. The teacher refused to commit an illegal act of not reporting the suspected abuse to family services.
d. A recent college graduate found a job with an office supply company as a reverse logistics analyst. Soon after being hired, he found that some practices within the department could be deemed unlawful and unethical. Three specific types of practices were written up in a formal complaint to his supervisor:
(1) The issuing of monetary credits to customers without proper documentation thus overpaying customers without returned goods.
(2) The department’s knowing withholding from contract customers by under issuing credits over $25.
(3) The canceling and reissuing of pickup orders that could allow couriers to over bill the company. After his formal complaint and multiple meetings on the procedures of the department, the employee was terminated based on his insubordination and inflexibility.
e. An employee engaged in protected whistle-blowing activity after filing a complaint against his employer for his termination. The employee, a licensed optician, claimed his employer was violating state statute by allowing unlicensed employees to sell optical products without a licensed optician present. There was also a complaint filed to his supervisor about the promoting and hiring of unlicensed employees.
f. A legal secretary is hired by a law firm. The Letter of Employment stated, “In the event of any dispute or claim between you and the firm… including, but not limited to claims arising from or related to your employment or the termination of your employment, we jointly agree to submit all such disputes or claims to confidential binding arbitration, under the Federal Arbitration Act.” On his third day of work, the employee informs his superiors that he would not agree to arbitrate disputes. He was told that the arbitration provision was “not negotiable” and that his continued employment was contingent upon signing the agreement. The employee declined to sign the agreement and was discharged.
